


Lifeline.

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hope, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A rewrite of the scene from season 2 ep 6, where Blaine says "prejudice is just ignorance", except Kurt is phoning a suicide hotline and Blaine is the crises counselor who answers his call.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48





	Lifeline.

At first, Kurt doesn’t call because calling makes it seem like a big deal.

He doesn’t want it to be a big deal.

The number is issued on the back of their student identification cards, printed in tiny black ink that haunts its way into an imprint on the back of Kurt’s eyelids. He takes one look at the digits before he hastily flips the card back over to his photo and shoves it into his jeans, where it burns a hole in his back pocket for the next three weeks.

Picking up the pamphlet didn’t feel like a big deal, but for some reason-- the number does. Feels like a last resort type of desperation that’s humiliating in a way Kurt doesn’t want to admit to anyone else.

Calling the number is like a declaration. One that screams something in him can’t endure what everyone else seems to breeze so easily through, can’t survive the agonizing years that are supposed to be the _best time of his life_ , can’t make it one day from sun up to sun down without wishing he didn’t have to wake again tomorrow.

It’s pathetic. And it’s not a big deal. So he doesn’t call.

But the day Dave kisses him, the sting of his lips gash him open in a million tiny pin pricks of pain from every orifice and pore of his body, till he feels torn apart and untethered and entirely numb with the uncertainty of how he’ll put himself back together again.

If he should even try.

He’s so exhausted with putting himself back together. Every time there is less of himself remaining to assemble.

And that night, flat on his back and floating in the stream of tears that runs steadily sideways down the slope of his temples, damp in the tips of his hair and across the cool spill of his pillow, he stares at the ceiling he can’t see and wishes for death.

The darkness is so opaque Kurt almost feels like he can reach and touch the rigid shape of it, like it’s a breathing, wretched presence beside him-- except he can’t. The weight of it is so burdensome it crushes the strength of every bone and pins his limbs to his sheets.

That night, he loses confidence that the sun will rise. That any of this will ever end. 

Inevitably, it does. The darkness slithers away but the pressure of it remains strapped to Kurt’s chest like a monstrous creature that lives only to suckle his blood and consume the air from his lungs.

After school he walks to the park and sits on a bench, echoed out metal, hollow and cold under his legs.

His cell phone rests between his palms like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

He doesn’t want the expectations-- doesn't want to feel like he’s calling for one last reason to convince him.

How has it _gotten_ to this point?

He sucks in a crisp, singing breath through his nose and follows the motion of a child swinging gleefully through the jungle gym maze on the horizon.

He doesn’t want any of it anymore.

 _Call_.

The time between the dial and the connection is infinite in its brevity-- the hues of the world around him sharpen into pencil sharp focus, spinning fast as a top on a delicate point.

And, then--

“National Suicide prevention hotline, Blaine speaking. Thank you for reaching out. How can I help you?”

The voice is warm, and deep, and Kurt gazes up at the billowing clouds, imagines it floating down richly from the sky on clefs of notes, bright strings of melodies.

“Um… hi,” he musters out slowly, unsure. There’s no set of guiding instructions for a conversation like this. A minute of silence breathes on the line where the offer is open to say more, but Kurt can’t fathom what to say next.

“Hi, my name is Blaine,” the voice repeats kindly, calm and shaped around the image of a smile.

“Kurt.”

“Hi, Kurt. It’s nice to meet you.”

Realistically, Kurt understands that it’s the phone operator’s-- _Blaine_ , he reminds himself-- job to answer his call and listen to him.

Kurt just didn’t expect whoever answered to sound so… attentive. And engaged. Like he genuinely wants to hear what Kurt has to say.

Like his call _matters_ against a line up of hundreds of similar voices crying out.

It’s entirely too much attention. Kurt flushes hot, phone gripped white knuckle tight.

“It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“What sparked you to call the Hotline today?”

Kurt thinks it’s a comically obvious question, and yet he still grapples for a response. He knows _why_ he called, but the origin of the thought is almost too intricate to correctly fit into words.

The answer he settles for is harsh enough in its over simplicity that Kurt hates it, hates himself, hates what his life has become.

But it’s-- not untruthful.

“Well, I’m thinking about killing myself.”

He squeezes his eyelids shut painfully tight and calls upon a memory, a warmth of feeling he can still summon the contact of, the way his Mother’s graceful fingers felt carding through his hair, wrapped around his small frame in the wistfully soft sheets of his childhood bed, a halo of lamplight silhouetted around her hair.

“Thank you for telling me that, Kurt,” Blaine replies, evenly, honest. “That’s a very, very brave thing to admit.”

It’s so startlingly opposite of what Kurt’s expecting to hear that it seems to trigger some disconnect between the tears gathering in his throat and their release.

A standard lecture that suicide isn’t the answer. He shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. His life is worth it, even though Kurt faces people daily who tell him _it isn’t_.

No, Blaine is thanking him. Telling him he’s brave. Kurt hasn’t felt anything more than cowardly in months.

There’s a pause, a flicker of the wind and a soft, melodic hum on Blaine’s end of the line. “Are you just thinking about it? Or are you planning on it?”

His voice is warm. So open and caring and warm like a blanket of fur on Kurt’s skin.

“Just thinking about it,” Kurt gasps out, feeling some unwind of relief deep beneath his heart and a tear trickle it’s way down his cheek.

He’s a little embarrassed-- he’s confused, and a mess, and he doesn’t really have a reason other than everything just _hurts_. He’s so damn tired of feeling alone he could rack apart in sobs with the ache of it.

And yet he still feels like he’s being a bit of a burden, like maybe he’s wasting Blaine’s time.

But Blaine doesn’t seem bothered. “Can you tell me why you’re thinking about it?”

Soft, and careful, and Kurt feels close to bursting into hysterical laughter because who is this Blaine and where has he been and why does Kurt feel every pent up ounce of darkness ready to tumble out of him?

So many unvarnished thoughts and throbbing aches of everything that is plainly wrong. Kurt has a difficult time finding where to start.

“I’m Gay,” is what he says first, because those words are easier than others, a little less foregin and jagged in his mouth. He’s said them before. It’s not necessarily the answer to Blaine’s question, but it’s the center point, the unwinding tip of the heavy pit in his chest.

“I can redirect you to some resources specific for the LGBTQ+ community if you’d like?” Blaine offers, and God, Kurt thinks he’s never heard anything kinder than his voice.

“No,” he blurts, suddenly a little frantic with the thought of losing Blaine’s company. “No, no, this is fine, thank you.”

“Of course,” Blaine replies and they breathe quietly into the silence for a moment. Kurt steadies his chest, grounds himself in the puff of Blaine’s air and tries to sync his breathing to the rhythm. 

Blaine speaks after a minute. “As it is, I’m actually gay, too.”

Kurt’s not sure if he was crying before, but he becomes distinctly aware of his sobs at the sound of those words, the tender, agonizing release of years of feeling ashamed and unwanted. He’s acquired a sort of numbing immunity to levels of the pain and suddenly his body feels warped from the inside out with a force of emotions. 

A defect. A reject. Isolated and irreparably different.

But Blaine-- Blaine is made like him.

“You are?” he sniffles.

“Yes,” Blaine answers, pride and confidence so evident in his voice Kurt's stomach swirls with a hope of that acceptance so keenly sharp he nearly feels nauseous with it. “Where are you calling from, Kurt?”

“Ohio,” Kurt gasps, so overwhelmed, so heavily overwhelmed in a way that isn’t tinted with the coat of sadness that has accompanied every thought, every smile, every laugh and wish and dream for the past few months. “Lima, Ohio.”

“Really? I grew up in Westerville.”

Kurt can hear his smile-- God, he wants to see his smile.

Kurt doesn’t really know why he’s crying-- they haven’t even really discussed anything-- but he snivels into the phone receiver, wiping his leaking tears away with the back of his hand, before Blaine gently says, in an all too knowing voice, “I take it you’re having trouble at school.”

Kurt can feel the suspension in his chest snap and recoil, like a guitar string tuned past it’s breaking point. There’s no receptor in his brain to stop the words that come flooding out of his body.

“I’m the only person out of the closet at my school,” he says around thick tears, salty and wet as they drip fast down his cheeks. “And I-I… I tried to stay strong about it, but…” The words cut through his mouth as he speaks them, but oh, how they liberate his heart. “There’s this Neanderthal who’s made it his mission to make my life a living hell... and n-nobody seems to notice.”

“I know how you feel,” Blaine replies, and there’s not an inch of Kurt’s soul that doesn’t believe him, that doesn’t hear the _knowing_ behind his voice, like the meter of Kurt’s own pulse. “I got taunted, back in high school, and it… everyday was a living hell, Kurt. I even complained about it to the faculty, and they were sympathetic, but you could just tell-- nobody _really_ cared.”

Kurt trains his gaze on the motion of a swirling leaf, hands cramped in his tight clutch and throat run dry as he clings to every word Blaine says for all he’s worth.

“Nobody cares, Blaine.” His voice cracks, broken and honest and fraught.

“It seems like that right now, Kurt. I know-- trust me, I do. It probably feels like it will never stop feeling that way.”

Kurt nods though Blaine can’t see him, bites a distressed finger between his teeth to redirect the overwhelming pain somewhere. The base of his throat aches with cries held back, and his voice chokes around the question, “What did you do?”

“I ran,” Blaine says simply, plainly. “Switched schools and turned my life around for them-- allowed them to dictate who I was and what I did.”

Kurt doesn’t mention the visit to Dalton, the surrender of things loved, dreams forgotten, and friends bid goodbye for the mere surety of safety and acceptance.

“You have two options here, Kurt,” Blaine says, and the strings of his words are a lifeline Kurt follows, an outstretched hand breaking through the surface to grasp his pale blue fingers. “You can run. You can make an irreversible decision at the hands of their pleasure. Or--”

There’s a pause, a pause that Kurt feels like his entire life hinges upon. It’s as if he’s reached the end, the devastating, rock bottom pit of darkness and suddenly, backed into a corner and loomed with the cruelty of his fate, there’s another choice.

The continuation of a story not yet finished, another option, and Kurt lets out a choked off cry because he’s never in his life been so exceedingly grateful to hear that he has another choice.

There’s a possibility, an alternative, a realization that it doesn't have to end this way.

“Or,” Blaine breathes softly. “You can refuse to be the victim.”

It’s not a seamless choice, not the remedy to all his problems or the immaculate solution, a little painful and a little brutally honest, and yet it’s a choice.

“Prejudice is just ignorance, Kurt. You have a chance to teach them all.”

“How?”

“Confront them. Call them out. Show them that you are bigger than them and their bigotry, braver and stronger than the hell they give you.”

Kurt closes his eyes. “It doesn’t feel like I am.”

“But you are.” The weight of Blaine’s voice is so genuine Kurt feels another wave of sobs rack through him. “You are so much stronger than their hate and you are worth it, Kurt. You are worth being loved and you are worth the life you’ve been given, and your value isn’t diminished based on their inability to see that.”

The tears don’t seem to slow. Kurt slides off the bench onto the cement pavement, steadies his palm on the hard ground and feels the spin of the world beneath him.

“I ran, Kurt. I let bullies chase me away and it’s something I regret every single day.”

A pause. Kurt gazes at the sky above him and notices the beautiful flutter of a passing flock of birds.

It hurts so bad. The world is so beautiful around him.

“Are you still with me, honey?” Blaine asks, soft and gentle and Kurt weeps.

“Yes. Yes, I am, I’m here.” _Please don’t stop talking. I’m worth it. I’m worth it. I’m worth it._

“It hurts, I know. And it’s not going to be a steady incline from here. It’s going to be hell and you’re going to wonder _how_ any of it’s worth it, but I’m telling you right now, there is a life beyond this moment waiting for you, full of hope and love and laughter and pain and every single thing in between and you are meant to experience it.”

For the first time in months, Kurt believes that.

“Tell me about your dreams, Kurt. What does your future look like?”

Kurt hasn’t thought about anything beyond the temporary vanishment of tomorrow for so long that for a moment, it feels nearly impossible to summon those dreams he used to spend so long wistfully, carefully constructing.

But when he searches for it, it’s there, just under the surface tender and left untouched, not tarnished, just forgotten, and the world seems to bloom into shades of color Kurt didn’t even realize had vanished.

“After high school, I want to move to New York-- a small apartment, dingy and shoe box size with no heat and obnoxiously loud neighbors.” It comes rushing out, and oh, how he remembers it all. “I’d be working three jobs, shifts at diners and dabbling in fashion, but I’d primarily be studying musical theater at NYADA.”

Blaine gives an appreciative hum, and Kurt barrels on. It feels as if he’s flying.

“I’d graduate, and then I’d move on to Broadway. I’d start off Broadway, of course, ensemble and understudies and little roles until I got my big break-- and then I’d star on Broadway, become famous and move into a nice apartment, start a career and use my talent to do something meaningful.”

It sounds silly, so young and foolish and yet so precious, a dear possession Kurt clutches close to his heart.

And to share it with Blaine feels like a gift, an open vow he’s etching into his heart, declaring to the world.

That he will endure this. These excruciating days can’t take everything from him.

“Your future sounds beautiful, Kurt,” Blaine marvels, awed and promising. “Is there more?”

There is, so valuable and intimate and God, Kurt wants it, has always wanted, can’t give up now because he needs to know that he can get there, that it is waiting for him.

“I want to get married,” he chokes out. “I want to belong to someone, and have someone who belongs to me, that I care for and love, that I would do anything for and who would do anything for me. Someone who cherishes me and loves me for who I am. I want a husband.”

“And out there,” Blaine says softly, and Kurt thinks for a moment that he may be crying, too. “Out there your husband waits for you, right now. He’s probably doing something mundane and seemingly insignificant, dreaming and waiting for you. Who knows, maybe he’s even on the phone like you are.”

Kurt barks out a wet laugh, battered heart dancing lighter.

“He needs you, Kurt. Your future children need you. The people in your life need you. They love you. I need you. The world needs you to live.”

Kurt nods, watches the hazy sun setting and breathes, in out, in out, deep exhales that feel like the strength he needs to carry on one more day.

“Can you do something for me?” Blaine asks.

“Yes.”

“Do you have paper on hand?”

Kurt grapples around for his backpack, pulls out a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen breathlessly. “Yes.”

“Can you write down a word?” Blaine asks, and Kurt never wants to forget the beautiful, caring sound of this sweet stranger's voice that has saved him like an angel. “It’s a word I want you to live by, a word you already have plenty of but sometimes need a reminder of.”

“What is it?” Kurt uncaps his pen.

“Courage.”

Kurt traces the letters carefully, taking precision in the script like it’s a sacred word.

“And when you feel like giving up, pick up that reminder and hold it tight, whisper it over and over and remember that you have so much courage inside of yourself, and you will get through this. You will get through this and you will follow your dreams.”

“I will,” Kurt answers, still writing the word reverently. “I will.”

“You’re not required to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Blaine says. “But if you feel like answering, will you tell me when you’re graduating?”

“In about a year and a half,” Kurt answers, and what used to feel so despairingly long feels just a little bit more manageable on the weight of his heart.

“November ninth,” Blaine says, and Kurt raises his eyebrows, wiping away at his leaking nose.

“Huh?”

“November ninth of the year you graduate, at eight in the morning, I’m going to be at a little coffee shop that I love on the corner of Allen and Barrow street. Can you write that address down for me?”

Kurt stutters. “You live in New York?”

“I do.” Kurt hears that beautiful smile again in Blaine’s voice. “If you’re in New York by that point, you can meet me there, strong and alive and proud, and you can tell me everything you’ve made it through.”

Kurt laughs, thrilled and thankful and grasping to the future like an anchor the guides him toward something to live for. “And if I’m not in New York by then?”

“Then I’ll come back the next year on the same day. And I’ll keep coming back, every year until I meet you in person, Kurt, because I know you’ll make it. I know you’ll be there eventually.”

“November ninth.” Kurt repeats, writing the date down.

“Eight a.m. Allen and Barrow street.”

“Okay,” Kurt decides. “Okay. I can do that.”

He can. He’s worth it. He can _make_ it.

There are nights when the darkness seems to devour him. Days when the taunting and the torment seems so engulfing, he’s certain he won’t make it out alive.

A night when his peers conspire against him secretly and mockingly crown him prom queen. A night when he sits on that empty park bench sobbing so gutturally loud he’s not sure he’ll ever know what it’s like not to feel pain again.

He grips the crown so painfully tight between his palms that his flesh rips open and bleeds.

And then he pulls the wrinkled, smudged lined paper out of the pocket of his jacket and reads the words.

_Courage._

_I am worth it._

_Blaine._

_November 9, 8 am, Allen x Barrow Street._

And he holds on.

And inevitably, the sun always rises.

**Author's Note:**

> It's important to note that this, of course, is fiction. I am not a crises counselor, and this should not be taken as an accurate representation of how a call with a suicide prevention hotline would go.
> 
> It's even more important to remind you all that you are not alone and the world needs you.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3


End file.
